Author Archives: Dana Pico

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Crazy People Are Dangerous: At least this guy is going to be locked up for a long, long time

The First Street Journal has previously reported on Kimbrady Carriker, the fine young gentleman who murdered five people in the City of Brotherly Love. Now, 2½ years later, we finally have a conviction in the case, and Mr Carriker actually might not spend the rest of his miserable life in prison.

Man who killed five people in the Kingsessing mass shooting pleads guilty, is sentenced to decades in prison

Kimbrady Carriker walked through Kingsessing dressed in body armor and armed with an AR-15-style rifle, then shot and killed five people at random on July 3, 2023.

by Ellie Rushing | Thursday, December 18, 2025 | 2:34 PM EST | Updated: 4:17 PM EST

The man who walked through the streets of Kingsessing and shot people at random in 2023, killing five and wounding five others in one of Philadelphia’s deadliest mass shootings, pleaded guilty Wednesday to multiple counts of murder and was sentenced to decades in prison.

Kimbrady Carriker, 43, admitted that on the evening of July 3, 2023, he calmly walked through a Southwest Philadelphia neighborhood dressed in body armor and wearing a ski mask, and pointed his AR-15-style rifle at seemingly random passersby — then pulled the trigger.

What is an “AR-15-style rifle”? Was it an ArmaLite-15, or was it something else?

No, of course The Philadelphia Inquirer didn’t publish a photo of Mr Carriker, but instead had a five-picture montage of his victims. Mr Carriker has already pleaded guilty, so it’s not as though the newspaper has to somehow protect him prior to trial. But, of course, the most frequently circulate image of Mr Carriker on that internet thingy that Al Gore invented depicts him in drag, and, Heaven forfend! the newspaper wouldn’t want to have people jump to the conclusion that the transgendered are Just Plain Nuts.

There is nothing in reporter Ellie Rushing’s story to indicate that Mr Carriker was actually transgender or perhaps just an occasional cross-dresser; she does tell readers that his attorneys had prepared an insanity defense, and the District Attorney’s Office feared that he might actually be acquitted by reason of insanity. He is pretty much bonkers.

He killed five people: DaJuan Brown, 15; Lashyd Merritt, 21; Dymir Stanton, 29; Ralph Moralis, 59; and Joseph Wamah Jr., 31.

Five others were injured: a 13-year-old boy he shot multiple times in the legs, and a mother who was driving with her 2-year-old twins and 10-year-old niece when he fired more than a dozen bullets into her car.

Further down:

Prosecutors did not want to risk that a jury might find Carriker not guilty by reason of insanity, Wainwright said. So they offered Carriker the opportunity to plead guilty to five counts of third-degree murder, five counts of attempted murder, and gun crimes. They asked a judge to sentence him to 37½ to 75 years in prison.

Mr Carriker is 43 years old, and he’s already spent 2½ years in custody. In theory, he would be eligible for release when he is 78 years old. He should never see the outside of prison walls.

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Perhaps we should start telling the unvarnished truth instead of hiding behind euphemisms

It was with some amusement that I saw the screen blurb screen captured to the right in Wednesday morning’s Philadelphia Inquirer “Newsletters” section of their website main page.

When schools move ‘tough-to-teach’ kids | Morning Newsletter

by Paola Pérez | Wednesday, December 17, 2025 | 6:00 AM EST

It’s not unusual for students to switch schools after the school year begins. However, some Philly principals point to one “concerning” trend behind a bump in transfers from charters.

The Inquirer spoke with a dozen current and former district administrators who say some pupils with behavior problems are pushed by charters out to Philadelphia School District schools. Charter leaders dispute claims that kids are sent to district schools over disciplinary issues. . . . .

Deep frustration: The bar is much higher for district administrators to remove students; they “can’t turn kids away,” another principal said. Making matters more difficult is a lack of additional funding to attend to more students.

Notable quote: “It’s just not fair,” said a third principal. “We’re not getting their best kids.”

Reporter Paola Pérez newsletter referenced a larger Inquirer article:

It’s an open secret that some charter schools push out kids with behavioral problems, Philly principals say

Principals say students offloaded from charters to Philadelphia School District schools are often “counseled out,” while they can’t remove students from traditional public schools for those reasons.

by Kristen A Graham | Wednesday, December 17, 2025 | 5:00 AM EST | Updated 12:16 PM EST

The trickle begins in the fall, some principals say: Students with a history of behavior or disciplinary problems or other issues show up in Philadelphia School District schools, often from city charters.

“(A) history of behavior or disciplinary problems,” huh? Is that the 21st century formulation of what those of us from the quill-pen-and-inkwell era referred to as juvenile delinquents? At least it’s better than “tough to teach.”

“(N)ot getting their best kids”? Nope, the public schools are getting their worst kids!

But at times, it seems like some students are off-loaded from charters because they’re tough to educate, according to interviews with a dozen district administrators. In district schools, administrators can’t remove students for such issues.

We also used a term, “reform school,” which AI defined as:

A reform school, an outdated term for juvenile correctional or therapeutic facilities, housed troubled youths for behavior change through discipline, education, and vocational training, aiming to reform rather than just punish. Today, these institutions are typically called residential treatment centers, therapeutic boarding schools, or youth correctional facilities, focusing on mental health and specific behavioral issues with modern therapeutic approaches, though historical ones featured strict discipline, labor, and sometimes harsh conditions.

Maybe the name and ideas of reform schools are what’s needed. Instead of sending juvenile delinquents those youth with behavioral or disciplinary problems to regular public schools, perhaps we need to send them to old-fashioned reform schools, perhaps we need to get them and their disruptive-to-other-students behaviors away from normal kids.

But, like the kerfuffle over President Trump calling Minnesota Governor Tim Walz “seriously retarded,” you’re just not allowed to use the politically incorrect words, and “reform school” and “juvenile delinquent” are just as politically incorrect as “retard.” Perhaps, just perhaps, if we admit that the delinquents are delinquents, and put them in real reform schools, rather than warehousing them in mainstream public schools, the vast bulk of our students would wind up being better educated than they have been.

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Reality bites San Fran Nan!

When Representative Nancy Pelosi was Speaker of the House of Representatives, she delighted in trying to impeach President Donald Trump, and forced through Articles of Impeachment not once, but twice, including one after he had been defeated for re-election in 2020 and was leaving office, hoping to attaint him from being eligible to run for President again in 2024.

Pelosi suggests Trump has no ‘reason’ to be impeached third time if Democrats retake House

The former House speaker presided over both previous Trump impeachments during his first term

By Lindsay Kornick, Fox News | Tuesday, December 16, 2025 | 6:30 AM EST

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., suggested that there was currently not enough cause to impeach President Donald Trump for a third time.

During an interview with USA Today’s Susan Page released on Saturday, Pelosi was asked whether the Democratic Party should consider impeaching Trump again if they retake the House in 2026.

“The person most responsible for impeaching President Trump when I was speaker was President Trump,” Pelosi began. “He gave us no choice. He crossed the line in his telephone call with President Zelenskyy as one manifestation of his disrespect for the Constitution, his jeopardizing the sanctity of our own elections in our country, and the rest.”

LOL! A telephone call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy?

The two impeachments showed how much the lovely Mrs Pelosi and the rest of the Democrats were infected with #TrumpDerangementSyndrome, because they knew the math was against them. And the math is against them now.

There are 33 Senate seats up for election in 2026, 20 of which are held by Republicans; the Democrats currently control 47 seats, including two held by (ostensibly) independents who caucus with the Democrats. An impeachment requires 67 votes to convict and remove from office, meaning that the Democrats would have to win every single Senate race in 2026 to have the votes to remove President Trump. And, even if they did, J D Vance, who they’ll hate just as much, becomes President.

San Fran Nan, who we all thank for becoming a private citizen at the end of this year, called Mr Trump a “rogue President,” and blamed the failed impeachments on a “rogue Senate”. It did not, and never would, occur to her that the impeachments were just the Democrats being stupid.

This time? The left could try to impeach over the President ordering the sinking of Venezuelan drug smugglers boats, but maybe she has figured out that championing drug cartels and smugglers isn’t a winning move. The Democrats could try to impeach based on the President’s aggressive enforcement of our immigration laws, but it wasn’t that long ago that they were telling us that “no one is above the law,” and “no one” would include illegal immigrants. The left could try to impeach him for sending the National Guard to try to reduce crime in some of our waste-case cities, but perhaps she has realized that trying to unseat the President to defend street criminals might not be the look the Democrats want.

But the real reason? For all of the Democrats efforts to trash and take down President Trump, efforts which have extended for nine years now, the American people still chose him to become President again in 2024, in an election in which he carried every seriously contested state, and in which he defeated the Democratic candidate in the popular vote as well as the electoral college. Perhaps, just perhaps, Mrs Pelosi is realizing that President Trump is just stronger than the Democrats!

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The journolism of The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Ralph Cipriano of Big Trial Blog sent out the message to the left on Twitter — I still refuse to call it 𝕏 — stating that The Philadelphia Inquirer scrubbed the story about Paul George, one of the George Soros-sponsored, criminal-loving and police-hating District Attorney Larry Krasner’s top minions, being disbarred from the federal court system.

Since we had already noted the newspaper’s article in a previous story, it was easy for me to check: the cited article remains available . . . but only if you know where to look. The newspaper has a Crime & Justice section, and if you type that in — the section does not appear linked on the website main page this morning, though it does occasionally — your will find the story listed, but not near the top. As of 9:00 AM EST on Sunday morning, there are five stories at the top of the Crime & Justice page, with a single column list of other article below that. The story on Messrs Krasner and George is the fifth one down on that list.

A site search of the newspaper’s website for “Krasner” brings up the story, the second story listed as of 9:06 AM EST. A site search for “Paul George” yields the story as well, seven stories down the list, but with the Philadelphia 76ers having a player with the same name, it’s unsurprising that the story about the Assistant District Attorney is down the list a bit.

We have noted the journolism — not a typographical error, but deliberate as seen in the image to the right — of The Philadelphia Inquirer previously. We reported recently on how the newspaper chose not to cover the felony arrests of eight “youth football players” in Polk County, Florida, reported both nationally and, in the Philadelphia media market by WPVI-TV, the ABC affiliate on Channel 6, as well as Chennel 10, the NBC affiliate, but the Inquirer chose to ignore a Philadelphia story. Website searches for “Thoroughbreds“, “youth football“, “Polk County“, “Davenport“, the town in which the arrests occurred, and “Grady Judd” conducted earlier and then reconducted as this article was being written turned up nothing on the story. The editors of the newspaper simply chose to ignore a story that they couldn’t have missed.

This is what my $6.99 per week digital subscription delivers? News censored by the political correctness and “anti racist news organization” publisher Elizabeth Hughes and the Leftist Lenfest Institute for Journalism mandated for our nation’s third oldest continuously published newspaper?

As much as our credentialed media denigrate and hate Twitter since Elon Musk bought it and removed most of the constraints and censorship — the left really do hate freedom of speech and of the press — without Twitter I would never have heard of the Polk County case, and if I had missed logging into the newspaper’s website on the 11th, I’d have missed the story about Messrs Krasner’s and George’s utter failures.

The Inquirer’s masthead, in 1955, proclaimed the newspaper to be a “Public Ledger” and “An Independent Newspaper for All the People”. These days, I’d suggest that they should use the logo I created to the left, because that’s what they publish.

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The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Editorial Board Attacks 77,302,580 Good American Voters Didn't you know? We "enabled" President Trump to fight crime, illegal immigration, and drug smuggling!

It was a couple of months ago that my good friend Daniel Pearson told me that he no longer wrote the majority of the unsigned editorials for The Philadelphia Inquirer, and in some ways, this doesn’t look like his work, but more like Will Bunch’s, though I certainly cannot say with actual knowledge that Mr Bunch wrote it.

The Editorial Board of our nation’s third oldest continuously published daily newspaper, which hates President Trump with a white-hot passion, recently raised my subscription from $5.49 per week, $285.48 per year to $6.99 per week, $363.48 per year, but nevertheless declined to cover the story of eight Philly ‘youth football players‘ being arrested for felony retail theft in Polk County, Florida, an obviously Philadelphia story which made the national news as well as 6ABC and NBC Channel 10 locally, has declared Mr Trump “unredeemable,” and is now going after “his enablers.” That would include 144,311 people in Philadelphia[1]Absent Philadelphia, Donald Trump won 3,398,997 votes, 53.66%, to Kamala Harris Emhoff’s 2,854,471, or 45.06% of the total vote., 3,543,308 in all of Pennsylvania, and 77,302,580 of us nationwide.

Trump is unredeemable. What about his enablers? | Editorial

The collective cowardice of those who support the president despite their better judgment has damaged the United States and forever stained each individual’s place in history.

by The Editorial Board | Saturday, December 13, 2025 | 5:00 AM EST

By now, it is beyond obvious that Donald Trump is unredeemable.

Trump assumed the Oval Office in 2016 as the most inexperienced, untruthful, and unstable president in modern history, if not ever. He has only grown worse.

When I see that the editorial writer was citing Politico and The Guardian, yeah, I suspect that it was the distinguished Mr Bunch who wrote it. But it’s interesting that the newspaper, which supported then Vice President Kamala Harris Emhoff in the 2024 election, would talk about ‘inexperience,’ when Mr Trump had four years of experience actually being President before the 2024 election, while Mrs Emhoff, though not specifically called “border tsar” by President Joe Biden, helped preside over a virtually open border policy, something which certainly helped our 45th President become our 47th President.

This past year, Trump has been a one-man wrecking ball, attacking norms, institutions, public health, higher education, the rule of law, and the Constitution. Never before has a president led such a relentless assault on the United States and its allies, while cozying up to dictators.

Trump has literally waged war at home and abroad, sending federal troops into cities, deporting thousands of immigrants without due process, and murdering alleged drug runners without providing any evidence.

Citing The Nation and Citizens for Ethics? 🙂

But this is where the Editorial Board don’t quite get it. Our good friends on the left kept telling us, ad infinitum, that the 2024 election was a huge call to protect democracy, and in taking their democratic choices, 77,302,580 of us chose, democratically, to have a President who would take a wrecking ball to the old way of doing things, to “drain the swamp” of the federal bureaucracy, and to expose and end things like Somali immigrants defrauding Minnesota’s social services system of hundreds of millions, if not over a billion dollars, a story so important that columnist Jenice Armstrong had to cite a New York Times story on it, because the Inquirer did not.[2]A site search for Somali, conducted at 11:32 AM EST on Saturday, December 13th failed to turn up a story, though it listed several articles, including opinion columns, about President Trump’s … Continue reading It was our democratic choice to have the 47th President actually enforce our immigration laws, the laws our good friends on the left, including our 46th President, told us no one was above, or at least that was what they told us when they were trying to throw Mr Trump in jail.

The Board continued, trashing people like Senators Dave McCormick and John Fetterman, a Democrat, as well as Representative Brian Fitzpatrick, Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday, and “dozens” of Republican officeholders in Washington and Harrisburg. But aren’t the Republicans and a very few Democrats following the results of the 2024 election that was supposed to be a referendum on democracy following the democratic choices of the American voters? We voted for peace, we voted to reduce or eliminate our country’s involvement in the Russo-Ukrainian War, while Inquirer columnist Trudy Rubin continually advocates greater involvement, though at least she hasn’t pushed for sending American troops there.

In a move reminiscent of the FBI’s investigation of “radical traditionalist Catholics“, the Board even attacked Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s traditional Christian tattoos.

The editorial writer concluded:

One day, Trump will be gone — but his enablers will have to answer for the damage they helped to wreak.

Damage? What damage? The Editorial Board have been fighting against greater law enforcement against street crimes, against enforcing our immigration laws, against interdicting drug smugglers, against fighting welfare fraud, and against the rights of real women. There are 77,302,580 of us who are very proud of having enabled President Trump’s efforts to return America to normal people!

References

References
↑1 Absent Philadelphia, Donald Trump won 3,398,997 votes, 53.66%, to Kamala Harris Emhoff’s 2,854,471, or 45.06% of the total vote.
↑2 A site search for Somali, conducted at 11:32 AM EST on Saturday, December 13th failed to turn up a story, though it listed several articles, including opinion columns, about President Trump’s reaction to it.
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Philly ADA Paul George disbarred from federal court, but so far, his boss, Larry Krasner, has skated

When an attorney of many years experience gets disbarred by a court, it is not a trivial thing, but a serious, serious punishment, and not something judges take lightly. But, congratulations to Philadelphia’s George Soros-sponsored, criminal-loving and police-hating District Attorney, Larry Krasner, for getting one of his minions kicked out of practice for deliberate lying to a a federal district court. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

A supervisor in Philly DA Larry Krasner’s office has been disbarred in federal court

A panel of judges said Paul George “lied repeatedly” while seeking to overturn the death sentence of Robert Wharton, who killed a Mount Airy couple and left their 7-month-old baby behind to die.

by Chris Palmer | Thursday, December 11, 2025 | 12:33 PM EST

A veteran lawyer in the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office has been disbarred in the region’s federal courts after a panel of judges concluded he “lied repeatedly” while seeking to overturn the death sentence of a man who killed an East Mount Airy couple in their home and left their infant daughter inside to die.

Paul George, an assistant district attorney who handles appellate cases, was a key player in his office’s attempts to have Robert Wharton’s death penalty reversed so he could serve a life sentence instead.

U.S. District Judge Mitchell Goldberg denied that request, but not before finding that District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office had provided incomplete and misleading information in its efforts to free Wharton from death row.

After Goldberg made his decision, George and a colleague who handled the case faced federal disciplinary proceedings to examine whether their conduct — which was also criticized by an appeals court — was intentionally deceptive.

We get it: Mr Krasner is a long-time opponent of capital punishment, having campaigned on, among other things, never seeking a death sentence in a capital murder case.

But this paragraph, from the same article, shows the ridiculousness of Mr Krasner’s moves:

Krasner says his defense work doesn’t make him soft on crime, but rather someone who can differentiate between redeemable defendants and hardened criminals.

Mr Krasner and his minions are not seeking to have Mr Wharton released, or be granted a new trial, but simply to convert his death sentence to life in prison. We fail to understand how the District Attorney could consider Mr Wharton, now 62 years old, to be a “redeemable defendant” and still want to keep him locked up for the rest of his miserable life. Mr Wharton was tried and convicted in 1985, forty years ago. Here is Judge Goldberg’s memorandum opinion from May 11, 2022, noting all of the appeals filed in Mr Wharton’s behalf to save him from execution.

There’s also a particular degree of stupidity in all of this. Despite the current case being federal, as Mr Wharton’s attorneys, now joined by Mr Krasner’s office, sought relief under the Sixth Amendment, the killer was tried and sentenced in Pennsylvania’s state courts; he’s under a Pennsylvania capital sentence, not a federal one. The Commonwealth has executed exactly three men since the restoration of capital punishment in 1976, all in the late 1990s, and all having voluntarily dropped all of their appeals. Pennsylvania’s governors do not have the authority to commute sentences or pardon criminals on their own, but the two most recent governors, Tom Wolf and Josh Shapiro, the current Governor, have declared moratoria on executions, and refuse to sign death warrants. Ed Rendell, Governor from 2003 up until 2011, signed 78 death warrants, and his successor, Republican Tom Corbett, signed 48, but none were actually carried out due to various stays and legal appeals. The chances that Mr Wharton will actually be executed are slender, and Mr Krasner as well as Mr George have to know this. Why lie to the court, why deceive the court, why risk the legal sanction Mr George has now received, for this?

Maybe they’ll try next for Lewis Jordan, who’s only 39, and was sentenced to death for killing Philadelphia Police Officer Charles Cassidy, since Mr Krasner hates the police.

Remember: Mr Krasner wanted to find state charges he could bring against the January 6 Capitol kerfufflers after President Trump pardoned them, even though most had already served their federal sentences.

There is an issue of culpability here. Yes, Paul George and Nancy Winkelman were the ADAs making the appeals on Mr Wharton’s behalf, but Larry Krasner is their boss, should have known what they were doing, and taken action against it. If anyone should be disbarred, it’s Mr Krasner, but instead he was just re-elected for another four miserable years as District Attorney, to continue a previous eight years of lax and lenient prosecution, eight years which may have influenced the eight young gentlemen who thought they could rob a Dick’s Sporting Goods store in Polk County, Florida, and get the same no-consequences treatment in the Sunshine State, a story which made the national news as well as two Philadelphia television stations, but somehow, some way, never made the Inquirer.

OK, OK, that last sentence violated all sorts of run-on sentence rules, but it’s the truth nevertheless.

Larry Krasner is all about politics, not about justice, and not really about the law. He uses the law as a tool where he can, but he’s still nothing but a partisan hack.

 

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Killadelphia: Crimes of absolute stupidity

It was a good day for law enforcement, and a bad day for bad guys. Tyvine Jones, the (alleged) hitman for the Blumberg gang was arrested without incident by Federal Marshals in Lansdowne:

A North Philly gang hit man, ‘the very worst’ of society, taken into custody for three killings, officials say

U.S. Marshals arrested Tyvine Jones early Wednesday in Lansdowne. Investigators say he is tied to three murders in the city.

by Vinny Vella | Wednesday, December 10, 2025 | 2:33 PM EST

A North Philadelphia street-gang hit man wanted in connection with three killings, including the execution-style shooting of a 16-year-old boy, was taken into custody Wednesday morning in Delaware County, officials said.

Tyvine “Blumberg Eerd” Jones, 25, was apprehended by U.S. marshals in an apartment where he had been hiding at the Stratford Court complex in Lansdowne, authorities said. Jones was considered one of the city’s most wanted fugitives, and in October, marshals issued a $5,000 reward for information leading to his arrest.

Eric Gartner, the United States marshal for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, said Jones’ “unrestrained existence serves only to diminish our great city,” and his arrest demonstrates the agency’s commitment to keep Philadelphians safe.

Investigators say Jones is a suspect in three slayings that took place between 2020 and 2022: the killings of Heyward Garrison, 16, Wesley Rodwell, 20, and Ryan Findley, 23.

No, of course The Philadelphia Inquirer did not include Mr Jones mugshot, just as the newspaper has had zero coverage of the eight Philly juveniles busted for shoplifting in Florida. The newspaper article did include an arrest photo, showing the back of the (alleged) murderer, just enough to show his long dreadlocks, which makes me wonder: if the newspaper’s mission, as defined by Publisher Elizabeth Hughes, is to make it an “anti racist news organization” and “Examining (their) crime and criminal justice coverage with Free Press, a nonprofit focused on racial justice in media,” why publish a photo which did not inform readers what the suspect looked like, but one which let readers know that he is black?

However, if it’s a good thing that an (alleged) hit man is off the streets, two more Philadelphians were sent untimely to their eternal rewards in another crime gone bad:

A man and teen were killed during attempted sale of a Rolex in Germantown, police say

The attempted sale erupted in gunfire Tuesday, leaving Tyree Ware and Quaneef Lee dead.

by Ellie Rushing and Jillian Kramer | Wednesday, December 10, 2025 | 4:03 PM EST

A man and teenager were killed Tuesday night in Germantown when investigators believe a meeting for the sale of a Rolex watch turned into a robbery, and a shoot-out erupted.

Tyree Ware, 30, drove to the 500 block of West Queen Lane to sell a Rolex he’d listed for sale online, police said. Quaneef Lee, 16, arrived with an acquaintance to purchase it, they said.

Detectives believe Lee and the other male then attempted to rob Ware of the watch at gunpoint, according to a law enforcement source who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.

Rolex watches are ridiculously expensive, and are status symbols for the men who wear them. They are supposed to say, “I’m successful and wealthy and better than you” to other men, and “I’m successful and wealthy and you should go to bed with me” to women. Police recovered the Rolex from Mr Ware’s vehicle, and one of three guns used in the shooting.

We don’t know young Mr Lee’s intentions in attempting to buy acquire a Rolex; he may have had a second buyer for it, may have wanted it for status, or a number of possible reasons. But whatever his reason, he’s now stone-cold graveyard dead over (allegedly) attempting to steal a watch from a man who was willing to sell it to him. All three parties to this incident were armed, which one assumes means they were anticipating trouble. If so, trouble found them! Police recovered eleven bullet casings from the scene.

One last paragraph from the story:

The shooting comes as Philadelphia is on pace to record the fewest number of homicides in 60 years. Still, violence persists. Lee is one of at least 12 children shot and killed in the city this year.

Yes, violence persists, and two men are now dead over a watch, while Tywine Jones is possibly going to spend the rest of his miserable life behind bars, for (allegedly) killing three other people. These are all crimes of violence, but they are also crimes of absolute stupidity.

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The promotion of gambling by professional sports leagues is dangerous

Athletes like Pete Rose and Paul Hornung and Alex Karras have been suspended or banned from their sports over gambling, Mr Rose’s suspension lasting until after his death. The “Black Sox scandal” of 1919 occurred when eight members of the Chicago White Sox threw the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds, allegedly for a payment from gamblers betting on the outcome. Commissioners like Kenesaw Mountain Landis and Pete Rozelle were determined to keep their sports untainted by any connection with gambling.

But now we see all sorts of gambling information being put out by the major professional sports leagues. The NFL Network, owned by the National Football League, has plenty of sports gambling commercials, and I have also seen such in NBA and WNBA broadcasts. The NFL requires individual teams to publish injury reports and statuses during the week prior to the next game, and who needs that besides gamblers?

And so we get this:

Philly is now the No. 1 market for online gambling companies — and addiction helplines are ringing off the hook

Advertisers spent $37 million on the Philadelphia market in 2025. Online gambling help calls and texts have more than doubled in Pennsylvania and New Jersey since Mar 2021.

by Max Marin and Lizzie Mulvey | Wednesday, December 10, 2025 | 5:00 AM EST

One man, buried under $20,000 in online gambling debt, became homeless. A woman lost $13,000 and missed her last five mortgage payments. A mother gambled away her son’s college tuition, piling up over $100,000 in debt.

Such dire stories — shared with gambling helplines in Pennsylvania and New Jersey in recent years — are on the rise. And for the growing number of people, the problem isn’t the casino, but the apps on their phones that let them gamble anywhere, 24/7.

“My family is hosting fundraisers for my son who had a stroke, and here I am, gambling on my phone,” one caller said. “What’s wrong with me?”

The Philadelphia media market — which encompasses the city, southeastern Pa., central and southern New Jersey — has become an epicenter of online gambling in the United States. In 2024, internet gaming and sports wagering revenues alone topped $6 billion in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, up from about $3.6 billion in 2021.

The last play field goal by the Las Vegas Raiders, which changed their loss to the Denver Broncos from ten points to seven points, certainly looked like a play to do nothing but change winners and losers on the betting line.

As it happens, I finished Mario Puzo’s book The Godfather just a week or so ago. In it, Don Vito Corleone declined the opportunity to go into narcotics, saying that he’d lose his political friends and protection if he did, while the police pretty much looked the other way when it came to gambling, which they viewed as a harmless vice. But while gambling doesn’t leave junkies sleeping on the sidewalks and doorways of Kensington, the way narcotics do, there is damage nonetheless.

In the same period, the amount of calls and texts to 1-800-GAMBLER rose in both Pennsylvania and New Jersey, two of only six states in the U.S. where both sports betting and online casino games are legal. But calls about online gambling problems rose significantly more – 180% in Pennsylvania and 160% in New Jersey in that period. In 2019, only about one in ten Pa. callers said online gambling was their main issue. By 2024, it was every other caller.

My paternal grandparents, living in Antioch, California, would save their money, and occasionally take a trip to Reno, Nevada, to gamble. When they ran out of money, they were done. Now the casinos have ATMs all around, so that when gamblers run out of money, they can draw more out of their checking or savings accounts.

Unfortunately, the cited Philadelphia Inquirer article did not tell us whether there was evidence that gambling problems were greater in poorer areas than wealthy ones.

Having lived in the Keystone State, I sort of laughed at what had happened to the gambling ‘industry,’ Originally exclusive to Nevada, New Jersey saw the money that was being made, and legalized casino gambling in Atlantic City. Donald Trump and others built casinos, and flourished. Me? I thought that Atlantic City had wasted their greatest natural resource, their beaches, to promote gambling, and let the beaches go, if not completely to seed, to not very good.

Then Pennsylvania authorized casino gambling, and surprise, surprise, surprise, the Atlantic City casinos suffered, some going out of business, as Pennsylvanians stayed home to gamble. Now it seems as though every state has some form of legalized gambling, even if it’s only state-run lotteries.

I referred to the gambling ‘industry’ above, because this is an ‘industry’ which produces nothing; its sole purpose is to move money from some people to other people, with the state and the gambling ‘hosts’ getting their percentage, regardless of who wins.

The libertarian — not Libertarian! — in me says that if people want to gamble, it’s their business, not the state’s, but I know just as certainly as anyone can that out-of-control gambling destroys people and destroys families. Perhaps gambling shouldn’t be banned, but I cannot argue that we’re better off today than we were when only the Silver State had legalized gambling.

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You in a heap o’ trouble, boys! Apparently, no one told them that you can't get away with crime outside of Philly!

It is of absolutely no surprise to me that a site search of The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website for “Polk County” turned up exactly nothing on these eight fine but misunderstood young men from the City of Brotherly Love being so unjustly arrested in Polk County, Florida. But, Alas! the newspaper’s lack of coverage was not able to keep the story from Philadelphians, as both 6ABC and NBC10 News did cover it:

8 Philadelphia youth football players face charges in Fla. theft case

By Corey Davis | Tuesday, December 9, 2025 | 9:05 AM EST

PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) — Eight teenagers from the Philadelphia area are facing felony charges in Florida after authorities say they stole more than $2,000 worth of merchandise from a sporting goods store.

Neither 6ABC nor the NBC 10 News story named or showed mugshots of the arrested teens, but the Polk County Sheriff’s Office did. Sheriff Judd is rather famous for naming and shaming criminals arrested in Polk County, something this website absolutely supports. You can click on the image to the right to enlarge it to fill screen. The video of Sheriff Grady Judd’s news conference on this is embedded below, below the fold. Continue reading →